Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the exemplary embodiments relate to an electronic apparatus and a control method thereof, and more particularly to an electronic apparatus, which receives a user's voice and operates in accordance with the received sound, and a control method thereof.
Description of the Related Art
In an electronic apparatus such as a television (TV) or the like display apparatus a game console, a navigation system for a vehicle, etc., control based on a user's voice has been growing. For example, a function of turning on the electronic apparatus in response to a sound spoken by a user in the state that the electronic apparatus is turned off (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘standby mode’) may be one of the applicable examples of controlling the electric apparatus with a user's voice.
FIG. 1 shows one of the examples where the electronic apparatus related to an exemplary embodiment performs an operation in accordance with a user's voice in the standby mode. First, the electronic apparatus receives a sound in the standby mode (11). The sound received by the electronic apparatus may be a user's voice, or a different sound from the user's voice. In particular, the user's voice includes a command (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘reserved word’) for instructing the electronic apparatus to perform a preset operation corresponding to the sound. Next, the electronic apparatus recognizes a possible reserved word (12). If the received sound is, in fact, the reserved word (13), the electronic apparatus performs an operation corresponding to the reserved word (14). For example, if the reserved word is a reserved word for “power-on,” the electronic apparatus is woken up from the standby mode and is turned on.
However, a sound recognizer 15 needs to be turned on in the standby mode and be ready at any time to receive a sound and for operation, so that the electronic apparatus can receive a sound in the standby mode and recognize the reserved word. The sound recognizer 15 may for example be implemented as a microprocessor or the like. Therefore, the sound recognizer 15 unavoidably consumes power in the standby mode in order to remain active and ready for operation. On the other hand, there has been an increased demand for configuring the electronic apparatus so as to consume as little electric power as possible in the standby mode. Accordingly, there is a need of minimizing the power consumption of the sound recognizer 15 operating in the standby mode.
Meanwhile, as a result of improvements to the hardware or software of the sound recognizer 15, there is a corresponding increase in the reliability of the sound recognizer 15 in recognizing the reserved word 13. However, an improvement to the hardware or software of the sound recognizer 15 causes a corresponding increase in cost of implementing the improvement. Also, the power consumption is increased as a result of an increase in performance of the hardware or software of the sound recognizer 15. Accordingly, the sound recognizer 15 needs to be more efficiently designed in order to increase the reliability of the sound recognizer 15, while at the same time, keeping in mind the costs of power consumption.